Making a Difference One Step at a Time, Ms. Hargett Brings Her Eco Awareness to DAA

Mrs. Hargett is a mother, teacher, and a learner. She was born in Bristol, UK and has been teaching in Dubai for 7 years. She is an IB teacher and examiner. Mrs. Hargett is also very passionate about being more eco-friendly to the environment.

How does teaching in Dubai differ from teaching in different countries?

Especially in England there’s a huge difference because of the cultural aspects. I tend to find that many students in England are very closed-minded and haven’t had many experiences of travel. When teaching at an international school where everyone is from different countries and travels all around the world during summer holidays. 

Do you enjoy teaching in Dubai? 

I have been teaching in Dubai for a few years and I like the climate.; when it cools down a bit. Dubai is very up and coming and very futuristic. There is so much on offer teaching here, it is incredible and it’s very accessible for when family or friends want to come visit. 

How long have you been teaching in the IB program?

I have been teaching in the IB program since 2006, which is about 16 years, and I am a examiner as well 

Do you integrate your IB subjects with other subjects you teach? If so, how?

I teach grade 9 which is an IB curriculum, however I teach in an IB way so it’s a lot of inquiry based learning as a lot of students will go on and hopefully do IB in the future. So by using the same techniques and language they almost get a headstart. 

How has being more eco friendly affected your work and personal life? 

Well it makes me more Eco. So I really think about how much plastic I use or to remember to turn the lights off. But being a teacher makes it a bit harder since I can not laminate anything, but I work around it. I also realized that I bought plants and I bought plastic pot plants but then remembered that it is not eco-friendly so I ended up buying more eco ones. Being a teacher also lets me educate my students on how much energy we use and that even turning the lights off is very eco-friendly.  

 If you could implement one change to better the school eco-wise, what would it be?

One thing I would definitely change is the amount of paper we use. We use a vast amount of paper and a lot of printing and I think it’s changing our mindsets to how much we are using paper. The problem we have now with paper is that there are still IB paper sitting exams which use a lot of paper yearly. Although it does minimize cheating it would be amazing if we could cut down the percentage of paper we use in  the entire school.